Proceedings

(Post)Memory. How Does the Second Generation Remember the War?

Authors

  • Katarzyna Wasiak
    PhD student at the Faculty of International and Political Studies of the University of Lodz (Poland)
Stories of the second generation of Holocaust survivors show how experiences of violence, trauma related to the war are passed on to the next generation. The stories of the survivors show how long it takes to work through trauma, as it can remain in the family for generations. Marianne Hirsche calls the memory of the war of the second generation post-memory, or inherited memory. To date, volumes of literature related to postmemory in the context of the Holocaust have been written. However, what does the memory of subsequent generations look like in other societies which also experienced the war? This article aims to show postmemory in the context of Bosniaks society. The author will try to answer the question of how the war is remembered by the second generation - the generation which did not experience the war and knows it only from their parents’ stories and political propaganda. by the politics of memory, and are not family memories. It is clear that the families who have been directly affected by the war - through displacement, torture, or the death of their loved ones - pass on their traumatic experiences in the form of memoirs. However, they write their stories in such a way as to least burden their children psychologically23.

(Post)Memory. How Does the Second Generation Remember the War?

Downloads

Publication Information

Bela, B., Murtezani, S. ., & Abdula, S. (Eds.). (2025). (Post)Memory. How Does the Second Generation Remember the War?. In 1st International Balkan Studies Congress Proceedings: Vol. Proceedings 02 (pp. 323-337). Idefe Publications. https://doi.org/10.5331/